MetroStar and ActionStreamer’s AI-powered maintenance product Iris has been purchased by Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, Calif.
This makes Travis AFB an early adopter partner and marks a pivotal step in the U.S. Air Force’s modernization of aircraft maintenance.
“Travis AFB’s adoption of Iris shows a commitment to the men and women who keep our aircraft mission-ready,” said retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Cedric George, vice president of strategy and growth at MetroStar.
“I’ve spent decades in uniform understanding what’s at stake when a maintainer crawls into a confined space with incomplete information and no backup. With Iris, we are bringing the full power of artificial intelligence directly to the warfighter and not as a back-office tool, but as an always-available, safety-critical partner right there in the work environment.”
Iris began as an Air Force Spark Tank idea developed by Airmen stationed at Royal Air Force Base Mildenhall to improve maintenance on KC-135 aircraft. Today, it transforms how maintainers operate in hazardous environments.
The platform combines UL 913-certified intrinsically safe wearables, real-time two-way audio and video, AI-powered knowledge retrieval and a searchable digital log book for a connected intelligent maintenance workflow.
For aircraft maintainers at Travis AFB, confined-space maintenance on certain aircraft creates complex, high-consequence tasks that historically relied on manual processes, paper documentation and physical oversight. Iris helps to remove those barriers with safer, faster and more scalable maintenance operation support.
The platform delivers enhanced situational awareness into system performance and fuel-related maintenance conditions, which helps accelerate reconstitution, reduce aircraft downtime and strengthen readiness.
“What makes Iris different is the underlying layered intelligence. We’re not simply placing a chatbot on the maintenance line; we’re providing maintainers with a mission-ready digital assistant that understands their environment, workflows, and technical data,” said said Hannah Hunt, MetroStar’s vice president of product.
“Behind the scenes, Iris combines zero-shot object detection and semantic search on FMV streams with a retrieval-augmented knowledge base grounded in unit-specific technical data. Iris can surface a relevant technical order procedure, develop and submit work orders, and log the session simultaneously, without the maintainer changing how they work. That’s the hard engineering problem we solved.”
MetroStar will work with Travis AFB as an early adopter to ensure the platform delivers maximum value to maintainers, safety officers, engineers and operations leaders. The team will embed with Travis AFB personnel to help with institutional knowledge, validate operational use cases and mature the platform through real-world feedback, the company said.
